Here is a list of methods to get your low poly renders looking perfect.

Cinema 4d:gray background: Either grab the viewport, or make a background object and texture it gray.no antialiasing: Either grab the viewport or turn off in render settings.no texture filtering: Check sampling to "none" in the texture you're applying.

3ds max:gray background: Either grab the viewport, or open Rendering & Environment and set the background color.no antialiasing: Either grab the viewport or un-check the "Antialiasing" checkbox in Renderer tab of the Render settings.no texture filtering: For viewport, go to Customize & Preferences & Viewports tab & Configure Driver and set Texel and Mipmap Lookup to "Nearest" and "None". For rendering, un-check "Filter Maps" in the Renderer tab.

no antialiasing:if you've AA in Silo, force disable it via your videocard control panel; many users have already disabled it due to a selection bug that occurs with AA enabled.

no texture filtering:
not sure if this is possible, have tried so many combinations in the nvidia control panel as it is; if anyone can figure out a way, that would be awesome. but silo still can't render alpha in textures, so it might be a lost cause - an alternative application for presentation is desirable.

I have seen people make the mistake of not showing their characters or objects with 100% illumination.

Or in other words, they are allowing the software to shade the polygons which makes everything look like garbage. It probably seems like common sense to a lot of the veterans around here, but I'm sure it's new to the people just getting started.

In 3ds Max: The simplest solution is to "right-click" next to the viewport title (usually next to "[Perspective]" In the top left part of the screen and you are clicking on "[Smooth + Highlights]")
Instead of "[Smooth + Highlights]" Choose: "[Flat]" like shown in the image below (see red circle).

Of course, don't forget to go to "Customize>Preferences...>Viewports (tab)>Configure Driver (button)>and choose "Nearest" at the bottom under "Texel Lookup"
Which as explained above turns off texture filtering.

Lastly make sure that your viewport supports the texture size you are using.

Easiest way to do this... Go to: "Views>Show Material In Viewport As>Hardware Display With Maps"

Again, this will ensure that you textures are not compressed in the viewport, and you are seeing them at full resolution.

In Blender 2.59 (probably as far back as 2.5 and still the same in 2.6 I believe), you can turn off texture interpolation in the viewport in the User Preference pane - under System uncheck the box for Mipmaps. I struggled to find this for a long time, and most of the google search results were for renders only.